The Tison Family: Lethal To The End

August 15, 1988|By Reviewed by Kerry Luft, a Tribune writer.

Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison

By James W. Clarke

Houghton Mifflin, 320 pages, $18.95

On July 30, 1978, Gary Tison`s three sons drove into the Arizona prison where their father was serving a double life sentence for murder. Forty-five minutes later, they drove out with their father and another convicted killer. Twelve days later, Tison and his oldest son were dead. So were six other people-a young family and a honeymooning couple-who had crossed paths with the murderous gang.

James W. Clarke, a political science professor at the University of Arizona, spent five years researching the jailbreak and the carnage that followed. The killings alone are chilling enough to place this fascinating book alongside Joseph Wambaugh`s ``The Onion Field`` or Joe McGinniss` ``Fatal Vision,`` but Clarke uncovered more-evidence of corruption permeating Arizona`s government.

To begin with, Gary Tison never should have escaped. Although he had killed a guard in a previous escape, he was imprisoned in a facility where security was, Clarke writes, ``a joke.`` From there, he allegedly ran a prison drug ring and supposedly carried a pistol in his boot. And it was rumored that he had ordered the killing of a prisoner who had turned informant.

According to Clarke, the murdered convict had information on a shady real-estate partnership among a Mafia chieftain, a Phoenix lawyer suspected of involvement in the car-bomb murder of a reporter, and a former congressman who was a political ally of the prison warden. For arranging the killing, Tison apparently was given ``preferred prisoner`` status and was transferred into the medium-security annex. A money payoff helped bankroll his escape, which he masterminded with the help of his wife and three sons.

Though the details of corruption in Arizona`s prison are absorbing, the story of Tison`s psychological control over his three sons provides the most riveting reading.

The sons-Donny, Ricky and Ray-grew up believing that their father was a hero and a victim. In truth, he was a conniving sociopath with the ability to manipulate people as easily as Charles Manson did. It seemed no problem for Tison to influence reporters and state officials; it was easier still to dupe three boys who loved him.

The sons believed Tison`s murder conviction was unjust, and to this day the two survivors contend that Tison killed because the military had

``brainwashed`` him and trained him to carry out political murders and other ``secret missions.`` And although they watched their father and his fellow fugitive, Randy Greenawalt, pump shotgun slugs into a baby`s head, they refused to believe that Tison was to blame.

Even at the gory end, as the oldest brother, Donny, lay fatally shot in a stolen van, and as Gary Tison raced off into the desert, muttering, ``Every man for hisself,`` the boys believed that their father knew best. For these psychological prisoners, there was no escape.

When it was over, Ricky and Ray Tison were sentenced to death for murder-as accomplices-though they actually killed no one. Today they are with Greenawalt on Arizona`s Death Row.

Their father died of exposure in the Arizona desert rather than be taken alive.